ProjectBoxster5 | projectboxster

Changing my Boxster's coolant was my project for the start of 2020. With the coolant drained it seemed like a good idea to replace the water pump, the thermostat, and the drive belt too

Everything I need for this project. Note that I spent the long dollar for brand name Porsche coolant, made from the finest grade A German unicorn tears.

With the car on jack stands and the under tray and coolant fill cap removed the old coolant can be drained. It takes a big container!

Access to the drive belt and some of the bolts securing the water pump is gained through this panel hidden behing the passenger seat.

After removing the panel I used my phone as a flashlight, looked down into the opening, and said "there's the water pump." My phone replied "a pump is a device to move liquids by mechanical means."

Ready to take the tension off the drive belt so that it can be removed.

With the belt out of the way it's time to remove the pump. It was a bit of a trick to get at a couple of the bolts but overall this turned out to be somewhat easier to accomplish than I expected.

Old pump and new. The old pump appeared to be OEM Porsche, manufactured (if I read the markings correctly) in 2012. It appered to be in fine shape.

And the old and new thermostat. I only bought the thermostat, not the one pre-mounted in a new housing and not the $20 instalation tool.

I'm glad I didn't pay extra because the included cardboard tube made it simple to remove the old and install the new.

I heated the new 70 degree low-temp thermostat in a pan of water to see if it does open at the stated temprature, It does.

I made a point of buying a 1/4" drive torque wrench to tighten the water pump bolts as it would be all too easy to overtighten them. The theromstat housing attaches to the opening on the lower left.

Installing a new drive belt completes the job. The old belt was Porsche branded and looked just fine. Now it's just a matter of putting things back together and pouring in the new coolant.

With the coolant topped up and the bubbles burped out I put the Boxster back on the road for spring. It seems to be running a bit cooler now.

Shortly after I bought the Boxster I did the "DRL hack" thereby making my fog lights function as daytime running lights. At that time I Installed cheap e-Bay LED bulbs thinking that they would be perfectly adequate for this application and they were, for a while. After about a year one of the bulbs started to flicker. "Oh well", I thought, "that one got past quality control" and ordered a couple identical replacements. Fast forward about another year and a half and two more e-Bay LED's had the same flickering problem. This time I bought bulbs from superbrightleds.com. They were more expensive but seem brighter and the quality of light is better. We'll see how they last.

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The cheap eBay bulb installed. There it is, on the right.

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There is a special wrench in the Boxster's tool kit to remove the headlight pod but a 5mm socket works just as well.

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The eBay bulb on the left and the superbrightleds.com bulb on the right.

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The bulb goes here, beneath a plug on the back side of the pod.

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I know, the new bulb looks pretty much the same as the old. Hopefully it will last longer!

As you can see in the photos above, my Boxster came equipped with headlight washers. One of the washer nozzles was missing when I bought the car. It didn't bother me that the washers didn't function as I have trouble imagining a scenario where such a feature would actually be useful but the empty washer socket just looked wrong. What to do.. The first option would be to replace the missing nozzle. Nozzles are not available separately and are only sold with the complete headlight washer assembly that is priced far higher than I'm willing to pay for something that I never expect to use. Another choice would be to replace the triangle shaped portion of the headlight module that has the opening for the washers with one that doesn't have an opening. Although I liked that idea, I was afraid that new pieces would be a "different shade of clear" than the rest of the headlight and may look even more out of place than the missing nozzle. This is what I did to address this "problem."

The empty socket gives me a strong feeling of "what's wrong with this picture!" The cracks around the socket's edge suggests that the socket can no longer hold the nozzle tightly enough and that the missing nozzle was launched into the air the last time the washers were used.

My first solution was to fill the empty socket with this nozzle-ish shaped vaccuum plug. Although the plug looked much better than an empty socket I thought it would look better if all four nozzles matched.

An original nozzle on the left and a nonfunctioning replacement that my son Andy designed and made on his 3-d resin printer.

Sure, these printed nozzles are purely cosmetic but I still think this is an improvement. I did disable the headlight washer pump to make sure these won't be launched!

As of July first 2020, Ohio no longer requires front license plates to be displayed so I removed my Boxster's front plate as soon as I could. Looks better now, don't you think??

Want to print your own replacement nozzles? Get the STL file here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6725822

You'll recall that I had the holes for the center mount license plate bracket filled in when the bumper cover was painted so it was just a matter of unscrewing the tow hook mount and putting in the plug.

The front of the car looks much cleaner now, a big improvement in my opinion.

The remote locking button on my car's key fob stopped working so opened the fob and discovered that the locking button had come adrift from the circuit board. Here is how I went about getting the fob to function again.

This is what greeted me when I opened the fob. Research suggested that the fob's microswitches are known to fail so I ordered replacements from an e-Bay vendor. When they arrived (from Portugal!) I got my soldering kit ready and prepared to preform fob surgery.

While cleaning the circuit board I discovered that the OEM microswitch could be repaired. The problem was that the small metal cage that's indended to hold the rubber button in place had deformed. After gently bending the cage back into shape I was able to reassemble the switch and it works as new. If the switch should fail again I have replacements on hand.

Hazel, my three and a half year old granddaughter, informed me that my Boxster looks like a kitty cat, something that I had not noticed previously. She gave me a well reasoned and detailed explanation (see above) of why this is so and now I can only wonder how I could have overlooked something so obvious.

Cars for kids!!

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